The Pathwork Lectures On Relationships

Nov 18

……………..

The Pathwork Lectures On Relationships
By David Sunfellow

The Pathwork Lectures of Eva Pierrakos provide the best, most clear and inspiring material I have ever come across when it comes to the importance of human relationships — especially male/female relationships. What follows are quotes from some of my favorite lectures, including Pathwork Lecture 44: “The Forces of Love, Eros, and Sex”, which presents the best overview of relationship dynamics and potentials I have ever encountered.

You can find all 258 Pathwork Lectures posted here. Audio recordings of the lectures are located here. You can find a quick overview of where the Pathwork Lectures came from and what, exactly, they teach posted here. And you can find current information about the Pathwork organization on their website.

……………

Life-Changing Insights From The Guide Lectures Of Eva Pierrakos Taken Mostly from the Book, Creating Union

……………

The Purpose Of Life

“What is life?… Life is relationship, my friends.”

Chapter 1: Relationship, Pg. 3

…

“The whole plan of evolution is about uniting, bringing together individual consciousness, for only this way can separateness be given up.”

Chapter 1: Relationship, Pg. 3

…

“As long as the soul is separate, loneliness and unhappiness must be its lot.”

Chapter 3: The Forces of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 27

…

“Before you can truly reveal yourself to God, you have to learn to reveal yourself to another beloved human being.”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 36-37

…

“Self-fulfillment depends on fulfilling yourself as a man or as a woman.”

Chapter 11: Life, Love and Death, Pg. 118

…

“To stay separate is almost a conscious wish.”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 34

…………..

How We Stay Separate & How To Connect

“Every affliction of the psyche prevents relating to others.”

Chapter 1: Relationship, Pg. 3

…

“Relationship represents the greatest challenge for the individual, for it is only in relationship to others that unresolved problems still existing within the individual psyche are affected and activated. Many individuals withdraw from interaction with others, so they can maintain the illusion that the problems arise from the other person because one feels disturbance only in his or her presence, and not when by oneself… But contact makes it difficult to maintain the illusion for any length of time that the inner self is faultless and harmonious… This is why relationships are simultaneously a fulfillment, a challenge, and a gauge to one’s inner state. The friction that arises out of relating with others can be a sharp instrument of purification and self-recognition if one is inclined to use it.”

Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Relationship, Pg.44-45

…

“First, removal of the barriers between your conscious and the hidden areas of your psyche… Second, removal of the barriers between you and your counterpart… and the third barrier is between you and the cosmic stream.”

Chapter 11: Life, Love and Death, Pg. 119

…

“1. Only you yourself can effect your salvation. It is your responsibility; 2. You cannot possibly do it alone: You need the help of others who share the journey with you, who may often see what you do not see; 3. Without God, without the personal assistance of the personal aspect of God (Jesus), the undertaking is too vast for you to accomplish.”

From Pathwork Guide Lecture 258

…

“…intervals of seclusion are necessary for inner concentration and self-confrontation. But these periods should always alternate with contact — and the more intimate such contact is, the more it expresses spiritual maturity.”

Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Relationship, Pg.45

…

“All imperfection must be courageously accepted and understood before it can be changed.”

Chapter 10: Attachment of the Life Force to Negative Situations, Pg. 108

…

“The idealized self wants to be perfect, according to its specific demands, right now! The real self knows this cannot be and does not suffer from this fact. Of course you are not perfect in your real self. It is a complex of everything you are at the moment. Of course you have your basic egocentricity, but if you own up to it, you can cope with it.”

From Pathwork Guide Lecture 83

…

“Duality ceases to exist once you accept yourself as part good and part bad, as consisting partly of the higher and partly of the lower self. These two sides will be integrated and live in peace with one another once you accept yourself with both. And only then can the lower side gradually develop and grow out of its blindness…. By accepting your lower self you can gradually overcome it and, as well, the duality between the higher and lower self.”

From Pathwork Guide Lecture 83

…

“You do not have to become perfect; you are perfect, in a sense, when you can calmly face, acknowledge, and come to terms with your present imperfection.”

Chapter 11: Life, Love and Death, Pg. 124

…

“Being imperfect should not in itself make you feel guilty. But the hurts you inflict on others, no matter how unintentionally — out of your imperfection, blindness, and ignorance — is justified guilt that you should meet squarely and courageously.”

Chapter 10: Attachment of the Life Force to Negative Situations, Pg. 114

…

“The three possible wrong reactions as you recognize the hurts you have inflicted on others are: HOPELESSNESS about yourself — the negative, destructive guilt feelings that make you despair of yourself; SELF-JUSTIFICATION — the blaming of others for real or imagined wrongs that ‘forced’ you to react that way; and DENIAL — the fearful refusal to look at imperfection which may not fit into the picture you have of yourself…

“Find the right way: Feel with the person you have hurt, take the justified guilt upon yourself, wish to become different, desire to give up your fear of loving. Such an attitude is healthy and constructive.”

Chapter 10: Attachment of the Life Force to Negative Situations, Pg. 115

………………

The All-Pervasive & Self-Defeating Tendency To Blame Others For Our Own Shortcomings

“When you avoid looking at some parts of yourself, you cannot help but project outwardly onto others and into the outside life what is in you.”

Chapter 11: Life, Love and Death, Pg. 122

…

“Difficulties and fears arise to the exact degree that you still project on others your own problems…”

Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Relationship, Pg.49

…

“If you are alienated from your own unconscious, you must act out what deep in yourself you know exists within you. You act it out with another person and affect the unconscious and concealed level of that other person.”

Chapter 5: Mutuality: A Cosmic Principle and Law, Pg.60

…

“The only way you can avoid becoming a victim of blame and guilt projection is to avoid doing it yourself… Only to the degree that you undefensively explore and accept your own problematic reactions and distortions, negativities and destructiveness, can you defuse someone else’s guilt projection. Only then will you not be drawn into a maze of falseness and confusion in which uncertainty, defensiveness, and weakness may make you either retreat or become overaggressive.”

Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Relationship, Pg.49

…

“The more you expose every detail of the disparity between your demands, your own ungiving intentions and the punishment you mete out when your demands are not met, the more you clear yourself of guilt. The clearer you can see the unfairness of what you demand compared to what you give, how differently you insist on being treated from how you treat others, and exactly how you choose to punish — always so that you cannot be caught, so you cannot be made accountable — the quicker you will free yourself of a burden that causes depression, anxiety, worry, hopelessness, and often physical illness and material frustration as well.”

“One of the most popular ways of punishing others for not responding with love to your ungivingness is to render them guilty — to build your case in such a way that they seem to be the cause of your misery. You can convince yourself quite successfully of this when you choose to see only the result of your spiteful withholding. You deliberately ignore the fact that you cannot get the response that you would like from others when your own psyche is still steeped in a negative, non-giving attitude toward life. Your negativity says, ‘I will deny the truth and will blame the other for not giving me all and for not letting me get away with my one-sided demands. And if he dares to react to this, I will punish him by hating him and by blaming him even more!'”

“The best gauge to determine whether or not it exists in you (the attitude to blame and punish others for your own shortcomings) is the state of your own mind and emotions. If you feel no anxiety and are comfortable with others, if your life is expanding in a joyous way, and if you regard occasional difficulties as meaningful stepping stones, then you have already vastly overcome this poisonous attitude. But you, too, must have had it at one time and dealt with it by working your way through your pride, your investment in your pretense, your cowardice.”

“When you admit your ill will, my friends, you perform the most fundamental act of love… You may give things, money, good deeds, even tenderness and concern, but they are hollow gifts without setting the other free by honest admission of your negativity.”

“The guilt caused by your unfair demands, your spite, the withholding of your love, and the compounded guilt caused by punishing others for your misery, must erode your strength and your self-expression. It makes you truly weak. How can you, as long as you continue in this attitude, ever have faith in yourself, ever believe in your dignity as a free human being? You may try all sorts of artificial ways to instill self-confidence in yourself, but it will never work unless you face the secondary guilt and give it up by admitting it. Then you may even stay, if you so choose, with the primary guilt — the guilt of not wanting to love — but at least you have assumed the responsibility.”

“When you end the old pattern of blaming others in order to justify your unfairness and your unloving demands, you not only unhook yourself from this double-bind, you also help unhook the other person.”

“Only when you know your own negativity, truly own up to it, assume responsibility for it and no longer project it onto others while distorting reality to be able to do so, will you suddenly gain new insight into other people, so that even when they do not admit it, you will know what is happening… As you read your own mind accurately, you cannot help reading those of others — since in reality it is all one mind. Other people are a closed book only as long as you hide from your own mind.”

“Whenever you judge someone, whenever you resent his or her faults, please ask yourself: ‘Don’t I, perhaps in a different way, have a similar fault? And doesn’t the person whom I judge so harshly have some good qualities that I lack?’… And if perchance the outcome of this evaluation turns out to be that your faults are really so much less and your good qualities so much superior to the other’s, that is all the more reason to cultivate your tolerance and understanding. If you did so, you would indeed be in a higher state of development, which means, above all, the obligation to be understanding and forgiving. If you lack that ability, all your superior qualities mean nothing!”

Chapter 8: Objectivity and Subjectivity in Relationship, Pg. 86

…

“If you take your ongoing relationships and use them as yardsticks by which you gauge where your own inner split is and where you stand in your willingness to accept the negative in you, you will grow into greater self-acceptance. Simultaneously, your ability to have mutuality will grow in proportion to your self-acceptance.”

Chapter 5: Mutuality: A Cosmic Principle and Law, Pg.61

…

“If you cannot accept the evil in you, thinking, in effect, ‘I must first be perfect before I can accept, love, trust, esteem myself,’ you must express an identical attitude toward the other person. When the reality dawns on you that he or she is far from perfect, you reject the other person just as you keep rejecting your own self… This is very unfortunate… This causes a rift in you that makes mutuality and bliss impossible.”

Chapter 5: Mutuality: A Cosmic Principle and Law, Pg.61-62

…

“On the deeper emotional levels you will see that in many instances the willingness to accept others as they are is very small. As you slowly discover your intolerance, your criticalness, you can automatically know that you do exactly the same with yourself.”

Chapter 5: Mutuality: A Cosmic Principle and Law, Pg.62

……………..

The Purpose & Power Of Male/Female Relationships

“The most challenging, beautiful, spiritually important and growth-producing kind of relationship is that between man and woman.”

Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Relationship, Pg.52

…

“One of the main obstacles to overcoming the fear of death is the fear of letting go of the barriers which separate you from the opposite sex. There is a very direct connection between these three: Fear of one’s own unconscious, fear of love with the opposite sex, and fear of death.”

Chapter 11: Life, Love and Death, Pg. 118

…

“…Woman… has invited her enslavement… The stronger the rebellion and the blaming of the opposite sex, the stronger must also be, within the soul of that woman, the desire not to govern her own life, not to be responsible, but to lean on someone else. To the degree she makes unfair and unrealizable demands, she must resent and blame male authority and play the victim game.

“Similarly, to the degree man does not face his fears, guilts, and weaknesses, he will play a power game in one form or another and then resent the woman for exploiting him and overburdening him…

“Man wants the superior position, but resents the price of taking care of a parasite. Woman wants the advantage of being taken care of, but resents the price of losing her autonomy. Both play the same game but hesitate to see how they mutually create this distortion.”

Chapter 12: The New Woman and the New Man, Pg. 162-163

…

“The woman represents the active principle just as much as the man. And the man represents the receptive principle as much as the woman… No true man can be a man without incorporating the receptive, or feminine, principle. If he expresses only the masculine principle, he becomes a caricature of a man. He is then a bully, a tyrant, an exaggeration, a falsehood.

“By the same token, a woman who expresses only the receptive principle is a caricature of a woman and is truly an infant who leans on others, who neglects her autonomy. So to be fully receptive on the feeling level, woman has to express the active principle every bit as much as man.”

Chapter 14: The New Man and the New Woman, Pg. 167

…

“When a man and a woman stay together in a more enduring and committed relationship, maintaining and even increasing bliss depends entirely on how the two relate to one another. Are they aware of the direct relationship between enduring pleasure and inner growth? Do they use the inevitable difficulties in the relationship as yardsticks for their own inner difficulties? Do they communicate in the deepest, most truthful, self-revealing way, sharing their inner problems, helping each other? The answers to these questions will determine whether the relationship falters, dissolves, stagnates — or blossoms.”

Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Relationship, Pg.52

…

“Only by thorough self-honesty and self-facing can relationships be sustained, can feelings expand and contact blossom in long-term relationships.”

Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Relationship, Pg.46

…

“The spiritual idea of marriage is to enable the soul to reveal itself and to be constantly on the search for the other to discover forever new vistas of the other being. The more this happens, the happier the marriage will be, the more firmly and safely it will be rooted, and the less it will be in danger of an unhappy ending. Then it will fulfill its spiritual purpose.”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 31-32

…………….

The Purpose & Power Of Sex, Sexuality & Joining With Someone Of The Opposite Sex

“In former times, sexuality and spirituality were considered antithetical. It was not known that true spiritual union is a consummate result of union on all levels of being, including the physical-sexual one. It was not known that total integration and oneness must bring sexuality into alignment with spirituality. The realization of your spiritual life is possible only as a result of total unification on all these other levels, and certainly never as a result of splitting off any one part from the other. The real meaning spirituality is oneness and wholeness, and that means it must include all there is. Satisfying relationships therefore always mirror the degree of the individual’s inner unification. If you cannot find union with others, then you are in disunity within yourself!”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 152

…

“Q. Certain people believe that they can cut out sex and Eros and the desire for a partner and live completely for love of humanity. Do you think it is possible that man or woman can swear off this part of life?

“A. …there is perhaps one person in ten million who may have such a task… It may be in the karma for a particular soul who is already developed this far, has gone through the true partnership experience, and comes for a specific mission. There may also be certain karmic debts which have to be paid off. In most cases — and here I can safely generalize — avoidance of partnership is unhealthy. It is an escape. The real reason is fear of love, fear of life experience, but the fearful renunciation is rationalized as a sacrifice…

“Examine yourself. Go below the surface layers of your conscious reasoning and explanations for your attitude in this respect. Try and find out whether you fear love and disappointment. Isn’t it more comfortable to just live for yourself and have no difficulties? Isn’t really this what you feel deep inside and what you want to cover up with other reasons? The great humanitarian work you want to do may be for a worthy cause indeed, but do you really think one excludes the other? Wouldn’t it be much more likely that the great task you have taken upon yourself would be better fulfilled if you learned personal love too?”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 38-39

…

“Only in the very rarest cases does the sex force really become constructively sublimated and make this creative force manifest in other realms. Real sublimation can never occur when it is motivated by fear and used as an escape.”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 41

…

“The more immature the creature, the more sexuality is separated from love, and therefore the more selfish it is… Only if and when the whole personality grows and matures harmoniously will sex become integrated with love.”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 40

…

“Out of ignorance, humanity has long believed that sex as such is sinful. Therefore it was kept hidden and this part of the personality could not grow up… And this, in turn, has led humanity to believe that sexuality is a sin and that the truly spiritual person must abstain from it. Thus one of those oft-mentioned vicious circles came into existence.

“Because of the belief that sex was sinful, the instinct could not grow up and meld with the love force. Consequently, sex in fact is selfish and loveless, raw and animalistic. If people would realize that… the sex instinct is as natural and God-given as any other universal force… they would break this vicious circle and more human beings would let their sex drives mature and mingle with love…”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 40

…

“The sexual force is an expression of consciousness reaching for fusion. And fusion, which you can also call integration, unification, or oneness is the purpose of Creation. Whatever term we use, the final aim of all split-off beings is to reunify the individualized, separated aspects of the greater consciousness with the whole.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 141

…

“The power of sexuality in its most ideal form can convey more fully than any other human experience what spiritual bliss, oneness, and timelessness are. In the total sexual experience you break through the confines of time and separateness to which your unlimited mind has bound you. Such an experience reminds you of your true existence in the Eternal.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 142

…

“The blissful experience of fusion and the sense of timelessness in the sexual union depend on the inner unification of the individuals in question, and therefore on their attitudes on all levels of their being. If the sexual experience is an expression of the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels, and if these levels are unified with each other without any conflict, then the people who express their being on all these levels in accordance with spiritual law have a sexual experience as complete, fulfilling, rich, joyous, nourishing, sustaining, furthering and reminiscent of spiritual reality as any human experience can be.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 142

…

“If attraction exists on the physical level, without other levels entering into the expression at least to some degree, the ensuing experience will be disappointing. It can never be more than an infinitesimal and superficial representation of what the soul really longs for.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 143

…

“Once you realize that sexual fusion is insufficient and uninteresting unless it includes all the energy bodies in the process of coming together, your approach to a sexual encounter will become very different. Sexual union will never be casual or haphazard; you will consider it a holy ritual.”

Chapter 15: The New Marriage, Pg. 180

……………

FUSION ON THE EMOTIONAL LEVEL:

“On the emotional level, the movement toward fusion must be expressed in a feeling-exchange… Such an endeavor requires that you temporarily put aside your ego, your own needs, expectations, and personal preoccupations to make yourself empty. Then you can let in what is, let in the other person so you can truly perceive, experience, and feel all the complexities of this other being.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 144

…

“When you have no stake in maintaining an illusory image of who the other person ought to be, and then resenting it when he or she is not that, you will be open and sufficiently empty to let in what is.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 144

…

“The ability to take frustration and pain is essential to giving and receiving and experiencing bliss… If you are very threatened by and defended against pain — the pain of not having your way, the pain of being hurt a little, the pain of having to give up an imaginary or even a real advantage — you will create a hard wall out of your flowing energy stream. Nothing can come into you through this wall, nor can anything flow out from you toward others… You cannot fuse and thus you can have no real pleasure.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 144

…

“Loving, and therefore the ability to give and receive, depends on one’s ability to perceive reality with uncluttered vision. This ability, in turn, depends on how well you can suffer pain in an undefended way that is free from manipulative interpretations of the pain. Such interpretations only aim to annul the pain, whereas letting the pain be will make room for a truthful interpretation of the events which bring the pain about.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 144

…

“The aspect of real love which I refer to as letting the other be means more than just accepting where and who the other person is at any given moment. It means having a vision of the total person, including his or her as yet unrealized potential. Such a vision of the unmanifest in another person is a great act of love. It has nothing to do with the illusion of manufacturing another kind of person for the purpose of selfwilled needs.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 144

…

“The fusion you long for can only come about if every feeling you long to receive, every single aspect of loving, is richly flowing out of you. These aspects of love include tenderness, warmth, respect, and also the recognition of the essence of the other with his or her capacity for growth, change, and goodness. Add to these patience, and giving the other the benefit of the doubt. Make room for alternative interpretations. Trust, and give the other room to unfold and to be… Fusion can take place on the emotional level only when you are fully committed to learn to expand your own capacity to give these components of perfect love.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 146

…

“In order to fuse emotionally… it is equally necessary to express yourself truthfully toward the other person, even when this may not be welcome or desired. Not doing so under the guise of a so-called loving goodness… is… usually dishonest. For in reality you merely fear unpleasant consequences and are thus not willing to risk pain, exposure, confrontation, and the hard work of reintegrating the relationship on both a higher and more profound level.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 146

…

“The fulfillment and bliss your soul longs for can only be satisfied through fusion with another consciousness. It depends on your ability to risk, to confront, to admit your most guarded secret, and as a result to speak up when the other person puts obstructions in the way. You must also recognize your own reluctance to express your best feelings when the unexpressed negativities and hidden games of your partner make this impossible… The right kind of assertion does not blame the other, and yet it also recognizes what the other is doing. When you no longer have a stake in blaming, you can truly speak up.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 147

……………

FUSION ON THE MENTAL LEVEL:

“Mental fusion exists on the level of the thinking mind. The ability to exchange the deepest ideas and thoughts and to risk disagreement and disapproval are basic. Mental fusion can only exist when there is a certain blend of compatibility. Two compatible partners have to share certain fundamental ideas about life. They must also be spiritually more or less on the same plane of development. This does not mean that every small idea must be shared. That is quite impossible and divergence in some ways is necessary.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 148

…

“Several qualities are required for reaching mental fusion. One is the need to grow toward truthful understanding of each other. Another is the humility to search for, and discard if necessary, the ideas and opinions you both may hold. You also need humility to let the other and also yourself be right or wrong. The very act of looking for a deeper way of truth concerning even the tiniest of issues provides wonderful fuel for growth and helps you to reach deeper union on the mental level.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 148

…

“Do you avoid any confrontation of ideas because it is simply too uncomfortable to make waves? Do you agree superficially so as to have peace because the issue is ‘unimportant’ anyway? Can you perhaps not be bothered to even deeply think about things that do not directly concern you? Or do you insist on being ‘right’ merely for its own sake? Is disagreement a way to find an outlet for the negative feelings and thoughts stored up in you which you do not choose to deal constructively with?”

“The freedom to have different ideas can be granted only when you are both anchored in spiritual truth. When spiritual reality if forever the ultimate aim, you also know that there is only one truth. And this applies every bit as much to the large vital issues as to the smallest everyday inanities. But you also know that this one truth has many facets, often including two apparent opposites that are parts of one whole. With spiritual truth as the ultimate goal, you will sit lightly in the saddle of opinions, ideas, and thoughts. This will make it possible to share and exchange them. If you always aim for inner truth, the spiritual truth, then the little disagreements or different opinions slowly disappear. First they cease to matter; then they become integrated or fused in the all-uniting truth of spirit.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 149

…

“Mental sharing must not be neglected. One often sees relationships with sexual sharing and, to a degree, emotional sharing, but mental sharing is strangely neglected… The world of the mind and ideas is an integral part of total sharing. And it is quite impossible for one person to fuse with another on one level in a truly satisfying way, while keeping separate on any of the other levels… For instance, quite often when frustration is ascribed to sexual incompatibility, the sexual incompatibility may not be a result of an absence of physical attraction at all. It may be the result of insufficient fusion on any one of the other levels.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 149

……………….

FUSION ON ALL LEVELS:

“Spiritual fusion is always a natural result of fusion on the physical, emotional, and mental levels.”

“Reaching the spiritual self must be one’s primary aim if total fusion is to exist.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 150

…

“When the fusion takes place on all levels, you not only become one with your partner, but with God. You realize God in the mate and God in yourself.”

Chapter 15: The New Marriage, Pg. 179

…………….

Everything About Us Is Revealed In Our Sexuality

“Whatever exists within the human psyche shows up in the sexual experience; it is impossible to keep anything out. The actual form of the sexual experience is therefore an infallible indicator of where a person’s psyche is. It will reveal where a person is liberated and at one with divine law, where evil and destructive, and where stuck and stagnant because the destructiveness is hidden and not dealt with.”

“The powerful creative energy inherent in sexual expression creates a condition where all character attitudes and all aspects of one’s most hidden nature must manifest… All that information is revealed and is available to anyone who knows how and where to look for it.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 151

…

“Look at your sexuality in a new way. What does it reveal to you about your non-sexual nature, about your person, your attitudes, and so on? Where does your sexuality bring out your problems, and where and how does it reveal your purified nature?”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 152

…

“Your most secret sexual fantasies, if examined in the light of clear truth for what they really are, will be your liberation.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 157

……………….

Polygamy, Monogamy & Promiscuity

“Q. I am asking whether polygamy is within the scheme of spiritual law?

“A. No, it certainly is not. And when someone thinks it may be within the scheme of spiritual development, that is a subterfuge… There is no richness in revealing oneself to many. In such cases, one either reveals the same wares all over again to new partners, or… one displays different facets of one’s personality. The more partners you try to share yourself with, the less you give to each. This is inevitably so. It cannot be different.”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 38

…

“Q. How does friendship between two people fit into this picture?

“A. Friendship is brotherly love. Such friendship can also exist between man and woman. Eros may want to sneak in, but reason and will can still direct the way in which the feelings take their course. Discretion, and a healthy balance between reason, emotion, and will are necessary to prevent the feelings from going into an improper channel.”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 41

…

“The cycle had to move from involuntary monogamous commitment — with concomitant limitations on personal growth for both men and women — to recognition of the debilitating effects of this state of affairs and a consequent libertinism and polygamous expression. From there the movement can now proceed to a new groundedness in real inner freedom and independence that voluntarily chooses monogamous commitment because it yields infinitely more fulfillment.”

Chapter 15: The New Marriage, Pg. 175

…

“Advocating the committed relationship is not a moralizing deceit whose purpose is to deprive you of pleasure. Quite the contrary. The power current evoked through a fusion between love, respect, passion, and sexuality is infinitely more ecstatic than any casual fusion could ever be.”

Chapter 15: The New Marriage, Pg. 176

…

“New ways have to be tried… before the soul can reach wisdom and truth. The freedom to choose independently, to experience sexual and erotic pleasure, to make mistakes and learn from them, to form different and more mature relationships as part of the growing process, without condemning less mature ones, are all necessary to learn the real significance of marriage.”

Chapter 15: The New Marriage, Pg. 177

……………….

The Tendency To Choose Love Partners Who Are Reflections Of Our Parents

“Because children so seldom receive sufficient mature love and warmth, they continue to hunger for it throughout their lives unless this lack and hurt is recognized and properly dealt with. If not, as adults they will go through life unconsciously crying out for what they missed in childhood.”

“The most frequent way of attempting to remedy the situation is in your choice of love partners. Unconsciously, you will know how to choose in the partner aspects of the parent who has particularly fallen short in affection and love that is real and genuine.”

“In trying to reproduce the childhood situation, you unconsciously choose a partner with aspects similar to those of the parent. Yet it is these very aspects which will make it as impossible to receive the mature love you rightfully long for now as it was then.”

“How can you manage to reexperience the hurts of so long ago? There is only one way, my friends. Take a current problem. Strip it of all the superimposed layers of your reactions. The first and most handy layer is that of rationalization, that of ‘proving’ that others, or situations, are at fault, not your innermost conflicts which make you adopt the wrong attitude to the actual problem that confronts you. The next layer might be anger, resentment, anxiety, frustration. Behind all these reactions you will find the hurt of not being loved. When you experience the hurt of not being loved in your current dilemma, it will serve to reawaken the childhood hurt… Now, reevaluate your present hurt, comparing it with the childhood hurt. At last you will clearly see how it is one and the same!”

“When you are inwardly ready to relate to another human being… you will find the appropriate partner with whom this manner of sharing is possible.”

Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Relationship, Pg.53-54

…

“A certain emotional and spiritual maturity has to exist. If this maturity is present, you will intuitively choose the right partner, one who has, in essence, the same maturity and readiness to embark on this journey. The choice of a partner who is unwilling comes out of the hidden fear of undertaking the journey yourself.”

Chapter 3: The Forces Of Love, Eros, and Sexuality, Pg. 35

…

“Since the limited and blind human consciousness merely gropes in the dark, very often your attraction to another person is not directed to the actual person, but rather to an image fabricated in your mind of what the other person should be in order to fulfill your real or imagined needs. The real person in this case is often totally ignored and willfully denied. The desiring person insists on his or her illusion and is angry when the illusion cannot be made to come true. Usually this is mutual — both parties seek someone else… and do not know it.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 143

…

“The measure of fulfillment you experience is a good gauge of how much you seek the real person. The absence of bliss indicates the illusory nature of the search. It reveals instead the superimposition of another person, such as a parent figure, over the real person. When your attraction to another is truly genuine and arises from a real and healthy foundation, it is directed to that specific person to whom you wish to reveal yourself in a most intimate and real way, and with whom you wish to be as closely connected as possible.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 143

…

“If a relationship is dissolved [because it] is more destructive and pain-producing than constructive and harmonious, it should be done when the inner problems and mutual interactions are fully recognized by the one who takes the initiate to dissolve an old tie. This will prevent him or her from forming a new relationship with similar underlying currents and interactions. It also means that the decision to sever the connection has been made because of growth, rather than as a result of spite, fear, or escape.”

Chapter 4: The Spiritual Significance of Relationship, Pg.49

…

“You may have noticed a pattern… in which an individual must first resolve career problems in order to resolve partnership problems… When relationships are formed to act out dependency, parasitism, exploitation of the other, and/or the need to dominate and enslave, then, for a while, these individuals have to fend for themselves until a certain minimal autonomy and independence have been established. Once the creative channel is opened up, the new freedom can release previously trapped energies, and people can begin to relate to the opposite sex in an entirely new way.”

Chapter 14: The New Woman and the New Man, Pg. 168

……………..

Obstacles To Real Love

“Honesty is the most needed and most rare form of love among human beings!”

“The blocks to true fulfillment exist because the infant within the adult personality still seeks its own mode of fulfillment… it seeks the merely receptive, in-taking kind of closeness. If the fusion is sought with such motivations it can never take place. The person who desires such an immature union lives in a treadmill of perpetual frustration which then seems to justify his or her caution, withholding, and negativity.”

Chapter 13: Fusion: The Spiritual Significance of Sexuality, Pg. 144

…

“…The infant in you believes that the proof of love is that your every wish is fulfilled. Therefore, in order to feel loved, you need ‘slaves’ who surrender to your every desire: “If I am loved, I must be paid homage; then I possess a subject.” If you believe that this is so — as the infant inside every human being does — it follows that you must be afraid of loving, for when you love, you must become the slave!”

Chapter 6: Desire for Unhappiness and Fear of Loving, Pg. 72

…

“You prohibit your capacity to love due to the confused notion that true love equals submissiveness, and you distrust others because you have an inordinate demand for being loved and served.”

Chapter 6: Desire for Unhappiness and Fear of Loving, Pg. 72

…

“Wishing for exclusive and limitless love is unrealistic and immature… The right conclusion would be: ‘The type of love I wanted so far cannot be mine. But I do have a right to be loved. This can happen provided that I, on my part, learn to love in the right and mature way.'”

Chapter 7: The Valid Desire To Be Loved, Pg. 77-78

…

“You will realize that is not you who are not good enough to be loved, but that the artificial mask you laboriously constructed is what is unacceptable.”

Chapter 7: The Valid Desire To Be Loved, Pg. 79-80

…

The Pathwork Lectures indicate that there are primarily two ways we prevent others from loving us: Either we construct a false image ourselves that makes us look more together than we really are (a typical male tendency) or we construct a false image of ourselves that looks more helpless and needy than we really are (a typical female tendency). We construct these false images hoping that others will love us, while others, sensing our false images are dishonest and illusionary, are compelled to withhold their love.

…

“When you do love someone dear or close to you, do you unspokenly or even thoughtlessly, demand too much perfection? When you find the affirmative answer, you will then know that this is not a good and healthy love, neither to you nor to the loved subject. It is to some measure in your power to help destroy the harmful masks of others. This you can do not only by destroying your own and courageously facing up to your real self, but also by trying to see the other person as he really is and loving him that way and not just a perfectionized picture of him. Furthermore, realize what your deeper and hidden reasons are for needing a more perfect love subject than reality produces. In all probability there is a measure of pride as a covered motive for this type of love you are bestowing. In addition, there must be a lack of tolerance and compassion in you, a lack of being able to accept people as they are. You should be able to love a person, accepting his imperfections, not having to close your eyes to them. In that way, you will really bestow a gift on the loved one, for he will then feel free to be himself and not be forced or burdened in any way.”

From Pathwork Guide Lecture #32

…

“When you persist in being blind to the faults of your loved one, a crisis, a shake-up, and a painful awakening that will hurt deeply is often unavoidable. Actually, it is not the other person who will then have disappointed and hurt you, but your own deliberate blindness.”

Chapter 8: Objectivity and Subjectivity in Relationship, Pg. 88

……………..

True Development

“…the highest form of human beings. These are people who relate beautifully; who are deeply involved with others; who are unafraid of involvement; who have no protective covering against experience and feeling… they love personally and concretely, regardless of risk.”

Chapter 1: Relationship, Pg. 5

…

“…what constitutes a profound and meaningful relationship… The only true criterion is how genuine you are, how open and undefended; how willing you are to feel, to involve and expose yourself and all that really matters to you. How many people do you know to whom you can express your real sorrows, needs, worries, longings, wishes?”

Chapter 1: Relationship, Pg. 6

…

“Knowing the state into which you can and must eventually grow, because it is your innate destiny, is important. Without such a chart, you cannot steer your ship.

“But there is a subtle yet distinct difference between organically following this model and attempting forcefully to be what you have not yet become. Accept that you cannot immediately be the ideal, totally fused individual. You know that it takes a long time, much experience, many lessons, trials and errors, untold incarnations, until your soul emerges as a complete being. You need to know that such a state exists, even if you are still quite unable to experience it… It should be a reminder of who you essentially are already and… who you will one day fully become.”

Chapter 15: The New Marriage, Pg. 177

…

“Articulate your longing. This is always the first step toward bringing what you long for into actuality.”

Chapter 15: The New Marriage, Pg. 169

…

“First, your thinking and your attitudes change; then the feelings follow suit; then your actions and reactions begin to respond to new spontaneous impulses. And these, in turn, bring forth new life experiences.”

Just skipping here and there through your quotes from the Guide’s lectures, I am re minded of the innate wisdom contained in these words; inspiration; timelessness; beyond space and time-ness.
I absorbed bits of them today, 42 odd years later, quite differently. Fantastic that I was THERE, in the rooms, with the Guide, Eva and all my co-pathworkers, turning my life and concepts of reality SLOWLY (oh oh oh, too slow!!)around.
Thank you so much. Thank you Eva and John and all Pathworkers/Friends.
I am filled with gratitude and appreciation.

Ann, thanks for beautiful comment, Ann. I applaud you for being part of the Pathwork adventure, especially in the early days. These lectures have and continue to exert a profound effect on my life and work.